iOS 7 will be unveiled soon, and rumours abound that Jony Ive’s influence will push it further along the spectrum towards a flatter, more elegant, more elemental presentation style — a ‘backlash’ against skeuomorphic overindulgence, as the press would gleefully have us believe, as if it were all simply a matter of personal taste. iOS 7 may indeed have such an appearance, but anti-skeu won’t be the sentiment behind it.

Currently, I think that there’s an inherent tension between iOS and its devices. The aesthetics of the OS have never quite fulfilled the stylistic promise of the hardware design, and I think that’s probably intolerable to Jony Ive.